stopping a salming

Tuesday, September 7 was the day Sweden and Canada clashed, at Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto in that September of 1976. The home team had opened its account at the first Canada Cup with a merciless mincemeating of Finland: 11-2 was the final. Next day, Sweden beat the United States by a count of 5-2. Canada went on to master the U.S., too, 4-2, while the Swedes shared a 3-3 tie with the Soviet Union.

Canada’s plan for the Swedes had two parts, the first of which precipitated a line-up adjustment: out went a couple of goalscoring wingers, Reggie Leach and Danny Gare, in came a pair with recognized defensive chops, Bob Gainey and Lanny McDonald.

Part two: smother a Salming.

There were two of them to choose from, both defencemen. Stig, the elder at 28, didn’t worry Canada too much, not in the way that his younger brother did, the Maple Leafs’ own Borje, who was 25. If Lars-Erik Sjöberg was the Swedish captain, Salming Minor was their on-ice leader, not to mention an offensive threat — he’d scored a goal in each of the first two games.

There was no secret to Canada’s strategy. “He’s too good,” Gainey said. “If you let him skate, he’s going to hurt you.”

“It’s nothing new, eh?” captain Bobby Clarke told the Toronto Star’s Jim Proudfoot afterwards. “Just like playing the Leafs in the National Hockey League. Everybody knows you’ve got to control Salming or he’ll murder you. The Swedes built their whole offence around him. He’s the guy who brings the puck out of their zone, and he’s the man they want to get the puck to on the powerplay.”

“Everybody had the same instructions — get in there quick and take Salming before he gets underway,” coach Scotty Bowman said afterwards.

Bill Barber was the first to hit Salming hard in the first period, before Bobby Hull applied himself. “He threw two clean checks,” Scott Young wrote, “with all the power of the strongest physique in North American hockey.”

Salming had one long shot on goaltender Rogie Vachon — Proudfoot rated it the hardest he had to handle all night — but otherwise the Leafs’ defenceman wasn’t prominent in the 4-0 win that Canada composed. Bob Gainey had been assigned the job of checking Anders Hedberg, but he found time to score a pair of goals, too, with Hull and Marcel Dionne counting the others.

“The man said he wanted us to hit Salming,” Hull said after the game. “I’m just here to please.” Canada’s back-up goaltender, Gerry Cheevers, agreed that Salming hadn’t been the force he’d been in his team’s previous games. “We can thank Hull for that. Those hits would have stopped a Clydesdale.”

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From Greystone Books. Available in bookstores in Canada and the United States. 2014 Hockey Book of the Year, as per www.hockeybookreviews.com. "Funny, smart, unlike any hockey book I've read," Dave Bidini has said; "Joycean," Charles Foran called it. "It’s rare to find a book that makes me proud to be Canadian," is what Michael Winter wrote: "A funny, myth-busting, life-loving read."

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Thankful that I never
played against
Wayne Gretzky
in an NHL playoff series;
I probably would have had to break his hand.

I would not have wanted to injure Gretzky, mind you;
I loved the guy.
I never touched him on the ice
in a regular season game.
I had too much respect
for how he played
and how he carried himself.

But I can say without question
I would have tried to hurt him
if we had been matched up
in the playoffs.
In my mind,
there are no friends
in a playoff series

I’m not talking about
elbowing someone in the head
or going after someone’s knees.
I’m talking about a strategic slash.
To me, slashing someone’s hand or breaking someone’s fingers was nothing.
It was part of the game.

Broken hands heal.
Fingers heal.
The pain that comes from losing does not.